Lost forever
by rachelreverie
Summary: One shot. Post-Chosen. Xander has lost Anya, and life without her is different.


Note: Obviously I don't own any characters, they belong to Joss and others respectively.  
>One Shot of Xander, post-Chosen. Enjoy.<p>

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><p>Buffy was driving – albeit not well – but she was at the wheel. Considering her increased speed and reflexes, you'd expect her skills on the road would be better. Dawn was in the passenger seat prattling on about something unimportant while everyone pretended to listen. Little Dawny, gone through so much yet still so naïve. She'd been exposed to the evilest of evils in the world, been created in the fight against it, yet she still could not get past the mindset of a teenage girl. Oh, to have the liberties she has still somehow retained.<p>

Xander rolled over slightly in the back seat, trying to get slightly more comfortable. His sight was still restricted to just his right eye, so when he turned there was always a larger blind spot for him than most people, yet somehow he had adjusted. The three of them were in a rented car from the airport, making their way to new headquarters. Giles and Faith and the slayers we together, while Willow and Kennedy had taken off a few days ago. With Sunnydale gone, there was so much destroyed, so much lost. Xander couldn't help but yearn for those things that I'd never see again, those people; that person.

The cool air is a change from the climate they were used to in California, and Dawn had finally stopped talking, her teeth chattering from the unanticipated weather. She's hardly appropriately dressed. Xander makes his way to what would be his room and at first opportunity collapses on the bed. Anya. She is gone. Forever. He rolled over so he was face down against the soft pillow. She'd died a hero; she'd saved Andrew's life. And yet a tiny part of him couldn't help but wish that their places had been reversed. That it had been Andrew that died and Anya that lived. He hated himself for it; that he felt so selfish to want her alive after everything that had happened between them. Things that, when he looked back on them, he couldn't understand how they'd gotten past anything at all. But still he wanted her back all the same.

At first Buffy had pretended to be worried about him. Acting uncharacteristically withdrawn had alerted those closest to him, but Buffy was still reeling from losing Spike. She was just as tired as he. The person he'd expected to pull through the most had done the least. Willow hadn't spoken to him since it had happened. Since they'd driven away on a school bus and left the nothingness in their wake. She had isolated herself with Kennedy, a strangeness about her that he couldn't even begin to understand. She was different. There was an air of power about her, not evil like before, but such power that he knew she wasn't the same person she was before that spell. Her childlike phrases and bubbliness were still there, but something inside her had changed. And apparently she had moved on to other people, people that weren't him.

"Xand?" Buffy's voice murmured from the ajar door. She looked at him with understanding in her eyes. They'd won as a whole, yet both felt like they'd lost all the same. Buffy walked quietly to his bed, lying down beside him. There was a sweet innocence in the movement, two best friends lying side by side, contemplating their losses.

"I loved her, Buff." He whispered to the ceiling. Her head turned toward him, her eyes down.

"I know." She held his hand in her own, her strength grasping tightly, though he didn't want her to relinquish her hold. It was holding him together.

"He saved everybody. He really did it." Xander could hear the fault in her voice, the involuntary break that gave away that she was crying. "He died a champion."

Xander looked at Buffy, her bottom lip quivering slightly, yet the corners turned up. He could see the respect and the pride glowing from her, yet the desperate longing for the vampire nonetheless. And he closed his eyes, relishing in the moment that they were both letting go and connecting somehow in their yearning. That Buffy and Xander were still best friends and although more than seven years had passed, they were still the same.

Xander opened his mouth, his eyes still shut. "They both did."


End file.
